Straight On 'Til Morning

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

6th December 2021

"I was used to hating Klingons. It never even occurred to me to take Gorkon at his word."
- James T. Kirk, The Undiscovered Country

Thirty years ago today, this movie came out in theaters:

It would prove to be the final on-screen adventure of the crew of the Original Series. Today, on the pearl anniversary of this film, we're celebrating that adventure once more. I'm thrilled to bring you a brand new, 36-card virtual expansion for First Edition called Second Star to the Right. This is the first of 2 expansions covering the movies of the Original Series era, and I'm so excited for you to see spoilers over the next 2 weeks here on this website. Of course, we'll also have articles about the cards and how to use them, strategy tips, and discussions. It's an exciting time, and I want to kick it off with an introduction to some of the volunteers that have worked hard to bring you these cards.

Meet the Team
Because it's the most visible and public-facing role, it's easy to think designers get all the credit for making Second Star to the Right. And while they are an important piece of the puzzle, it would be a huge oversight to ignore the hard work and effort of dozens of different volunteers aside from the design team. Our testers, rules experts, story-driven writers, artists, and proofreaders have touched on these cards for months to make them the best they can be. Please join me in thanking all of the volunteers for all that they have done (and that they'll continue to do) to keep the game alive. We all owe you a great debt.

With that said, I'd like to introduce the four (4) member design team for Second Star to the Right:

Paddy Tye [KazonPADD], Lead Designer
Designer Profile: Paddy Tye
Paddy's been a regular among First Edition design teams lately, and Second Star to the Right is almost at the end of his busy stretch. He is a hard worker and talented designer that guided the team to many interesting places during his work on this expansion. I always appreciate working with Paddy on a project he's managing, because he is quick to respond to my questions and always works with me to address issues.

Derrick Marsh [HoodieDM], Assistant Designer
Designer Profile: Derrick Marsh
Picking up off from his work on Dogs of War with Paddy, Derrick was able to quickly pivot to working on the Classic Film era. Though the process of buying a house dominated a lot of his time later in this project's life cycle, Derrick still made many positive contributions to the finished project. I appreciate Derrick's sense of what is good in the modern and current game, and what isn't.

Niall Matthew [sexecutioner], Assistant Designer
Designer Profile: Niall Matthew
Aside from being a regular colleague of Paddy, Niall was a no-brainier to include on this project because of his love of, and experience with, Khan. And while the majority of his work in that area was pushed out from this project into next year's half of this expansion, Niall is always looking for cracks in designs and angles to push in his design work. This expansion is better for his eyes being on it, even if most of his focus will turn up next year.

Allen Gould [AllenGould], Assistant Designer
Designer Profile: Allen Gould
Allen has returned to a design team for the first time since 2018's Metamorphosis, and it's been great to have him back. He is detail oriented and a traditionalist designer, which is a great counterbalance to a team with designers with more modern sensibilities. Allen is never afraid to ask "why are we doing this?" or "why isn't this being done like this?" and it always results in better, higher-quality cards.

A Programming Note
Had things gone to our original plan, today you'd be getting a 63 card expansion a lot more content than just Federation and Klingon. But, as is the case so often in life, they did not go according to plan. Specifically, as the weeks of testing went on, it became clear that while the Federation and Klingon cards were evolving nicely, the Non-Aligned half of the file - Khan and Sybok - was having trouble. It looked more and more like we'd have to delay this expansion months to get it working. Instead, we decided to split it into two. Originally, there were just going to be 2 expansions in the Movie block - a classic films release, then a TNG films release. Now, you're getting three! This expansion, Second Star to the Right, covers the classic film Federation and Klingons (mostly). Early next year, you'll get Paradise Lost which will focus on Khan and Sybok. And then later next year, you'll get an expansion based around the TNG films. You're getting the same number of cards, just spread out across 3 expansions instead of 2!

You Can Go Home Again
Now, with that programming note out of the way, let's talk about what you will see in Second Star to the Right.

One of the goals for the Original Series block was to allow decks to be played on the spaceline, without using a time location. This goal was also taken on by the Movie block designers as well. The design team wanted playing out of the time location to be just as viable as playing on the spaceline. After exploring a few new options similar to the card The Final Frontier, the team realized there was an easy, thematic, and existing way to do what they wanted: headquarters! Headquarters are a special type of facility defined in the rulebook as "...the centers of government located on each affiliation's homeworld." While a headquarters is a facility, they aren't outposts; they don't allow ships to repair nor extend shields. Instead, each headquarters offers an option for a free report that outpost's don't. For the Federation, this is Office of the President and it's The Great Hall for the Klingons.

With the decision to use headquarters as spaceline-based reporting options made, the design team set to work to make those options viable and fun. After all, it's pretty clear than The Final Frontier was superior to Sherman's Peak for decks, which was a mistake this team was eager to avoid repeating. The first step was finding a way to give more options for free reports. There are new cards for both Klingons and Federation that do this on their own, but we aren't showing those off today; there will be articles about them in the coming week. You can get a hint as to what the Federation card might be on our Facebook page though...

But another way to give more options is by providing more personnel. Office of the President allows ambassadors, admirals, and presidents to report for free - so the design team decided to give the president from Star Trek VI his first card. President Ra-ghoratreii comes with the standard "government" classification of V.I.P., and the standard skills of Diplomacy, Leadership, and Law. But he also brings Archaeology and, if you're willing to just keep him in a crew or Away Team of personnel, MEDICAL. That's not bad! And over the spoiler period, you'll find 6 more personnel that natively report to Office of the President as well - lots of new options.

On the other side of the galactic "wall," via The Great Hall, the Klingon empire can bring emperors, chancellors, and personnel with "High Council" in their lore into play for free. Magistrate K'Rea - the judge from Star Trek VI - is one such personnel you'll find gets a card in Second Star to the Right. He's similar to President Ra-ghoratreii with V.I.P.-classification, Law, and Archaeology, but he gets to add SCIENCE if with all personnel. He also offers a special download of Awaiting Trial, in case you want to dabble with a capture deck. And just like the Federation's cards in Second Star to the Right, you'll get to see 4 more Klingon personnel with "High Council" in lore you can play free to The Great Hall.

To Lock or Not to Lock
You probably noticed that both of these new personnel have a bonus skill that applies only if all the personnel present are . This isn't a new trick, as it's been used as far back as Emissary to make skill-dense personnel in exchange for some limitations. But it's also a part of design's shifting philosophy away from forcing players to stick to a restriction towards incentivizing doing so. We're looking to give you options, with rewards if you choose to do something instead of strict restrictions. And this change is directly in response to your feedback. You let us know that you wanted to be able to do weird stuff, like crown Commander T'Pol the Terran Empress in a mostly deck. We're listening, and we're opening our minds again to this kind of stuff too. It's our job to give you options and avoid tying your hands. So during spoilers for Second Star to the Right, you'll see a lot of cards that work on cards, but that don't require only cards. Hopefully they will allow some of you to make some truly weird and cool decks.

For example, take a look at The Undiscovered Country. This card gives you an extra end of turn card draw as long as all your personnel in play are . This draw doesn't care about ships, so feel free to grab a Future Enterprise if you'd like and crew it with all the personnel you can find. And it also doesn't nullify if you happen to play a non- personnel - it just turns off. If you want to play Admiral Riker to get you that Future Enterprise, you can! And if you get him killed right after, your bonus card draw will turn back on.

The design team also worked hard to make sure you can play decks out of Camp Khitomer or out of a headquarters and still take advantage of the new cards. The Undiscovered Country only nullifies itself if you have both the time location and a headquarters. If you've got one or the other, no matter which, you get your card draw. And you always have the choice to stack up free plays by using both Camp Khitomer and Office of the President, as long as you can find card draws elsewhere. All in all, it's about choices you make - so make the ones you like.

A New Template
I've got one final preview card for you, and it's one I'm thrilled to show you. Take Us Out! is fantastic boost to those ships, giving an additional +2 RANGE and a +2 SHIELDS as long as you limit yourself to just ships. (So if you do drop a Future Enterprise into your deck, don't expect a souped up U.S.S. Enterprise-B or U.S.S. Saratoga). I really enjoy how the cards that benefit having personnel and having ships are separate, giving even more choices to players. But honestly, the game text on Take Us Out!, while nice, isn't the card's coolest feature. It's the lore!

That's right, with Second Star to the Right, we're introducing a new variant on the incident template with both a lore box and a game text box. Nothing else about the card type is changing - no new rules, no exceptions to existing rules. We just have the ability to pack even more story onto cards when the extra space isn't needed. The Undiscovered Country needed more lines of text, so it uses the traditional template. Take Us Out! didn't, so it gets 3 lines of glorious lore. There's just the one of these new incidents in this expansion, but we're excited to have this brand new tool in our toolbox for future expansions. We hope you'll like getting the extra Trek Sense with this new template - we know we're excited to give it to you.

And with that, I've introduced you to Second Star to the Right. For the rest of this week and next, you'll get new cards here on the site every day. There will be articles doing a deeper dive into the mechanics of the expansion and sharing stories from design and development. And if you'd like even more previews, check us out on Facebook and Twitter. If you'd like to discuss what you're seeing, don't forget to visit the Gameplay (1E) forum. On that forum, will be a Q&A thread where the design team will be answering questions as you have them. All of this will be building up to the official release of Second Star to the Right on Friday, December 17th, 2021. And you'll be able to play with these new cards in all formats where virtual cards are legal one week later, on Friday, December 24th. We hope you're as excited to see these cards and we are to show them to you! Happy birthday to The Undiscovered Country, happy holidays to all of you, and enjoy the new cards!

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